Toronto – What kind of a future does 2009 hold in store for voice overs and the language services industry? Quite a bright one indeed according to the 2009 Report (PDF) released by the experts at Voices.com, revealing that $10.9 billion was spent in 2008 on language services and voice recording, an industry that is expected to grow by 7.5% to $11.7 billion in 2009. Voices.com is an online workplace that connects buyers with sellers of voice over and audio recording services.

Alongside rising sales for MP3 players, mobile phones and gaming consoles, the demand for voice acting in podcasts, audiobooks and video games has naturally increased as a result, becoming even more relevant to everyday consumers as the applications soar in popularity and reach new market demographics.

I have mixed feelings about Grand Theft Childhood – it was not what I was expecting in a book whose subtitle offers help to parents who don’t know very much about video games, yet it was in its own way very in-depth and in the end, I can see it being helpful to uninformed non-gaming parents. While the studies and procedures are valid – the authors spend the first four or five chapters quantifying their research and comparing previous studies done by others – I feel that they rely too much on the processes and not enough on the advice they promised, which they don’t get to until Chapter 9.

Throughout the book, the authors show that kids are much smarter than we give them credit for when it comes to reality versus game environment. While there is that small percentage of the population who are effected by extenuating circumstances, that percentage is very small even when the playing of violent video games is added into the equation.

There is also a chapter about the government trend of trying to restrict or ban violent video games, and another on the rating system. As with every generation, there has to be some form of media which is adversely influencing our children, and this generation’s bad boy is video gaming. I was pleased to see that an abundance of feedback from the kids who were studied was included in this book – who better to help parents understand the attraction of video games than the kids who play them?

While this book has been out for a number of years, its content is very relevant to today’s game design. Authors Dave Morris and Leo Hartas have produced a volume of beautiful game environment artwork accompanied by in-depth interviews revealing the inspiration behind them. From the world as it was to the world as it may become, the artists behind the digital worlds we inhabit share their thoughts on the advances which have been made in game development. The importance of creating fantastical scenes while retaining some level of realistic relationship with the player is but one aspect of game art design covered in The Art of Game Worlds. Also discussed is using art, setting and lighting to elicit emotional responses from the gamer during play, as well as how the artists strive to add that “wow factor” with every new product.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the development processes for environment design. The amount of knowledge shared by industry greats such as Chris Bateman, Ernest W. Adams, Mike Jeffries, Yusuke Naora, Cathy Campos and many more, makes the price of this book well worth the expense.

Vancouver – The ACM SIGGRAPH Vancouver Chapter has released preliminary details on the featured films which will be shown at the upcoming SparkFX Festival taking place January 21 – 26 2009 at the Vancouver International Film Centre (VanCity Theatre) in Vancouver, BC. In addition to these top VFX films, Spark FX will be showcasing 15 seminars and panels “with some of the most talented FX artists and researchers from Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles and beyond.” Among the speakers will be Dennis Muren, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor at ILM, where he has worked since 1976. The winner of six Best Visual Effects Academy Awards, Dennis Muren has worked with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron.

There will be a Festival Networking Mixer with music and a cash bar at 6pm on Friday, January 23 as well as the Festival Gala, which will take place at 8:30pm on Saturday, January 24.

Due to an increasing number of Canadians who shop online, Amazon.ca has just finished its busiest holiday shopping season in six years. Canadians had purchased gifts for friends and family not only in Canada, but around the world. Amazon.ca shipped holiday gifts to 120 countries around the world, including Algeria, Aruba, Australia, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Egypt, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Malawi, Pakistan, Romania, Slovakia, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Vanuatu and Zambia. Within Canada, gifts were sent as far north as Grise Fiord, Nunavut, as far east as St. Brendan’s, Newfoundland, and as far west as Beaver Creek, Yukon.

“At Amazon.ca we are constantly working to offer our customers the best possible shopping experience, not just around the holidays, but throughout the entire year,” said Julie Todaro, director of Amazon.ca. “We are thrilled that we were able to provide our customers with an increased variety of products by opening the Electronics Store in time for the holidays, and would like to thank all of our customers for their support. We look forward to continuing to
offer great prices, a seamless shopping experience and one-stop convenience in the coming year.”

Amazon.ca’s five bestselling items during the holiday season in each product category (based on units ordered since Nov. 1, 2008) were:

Kelowna, BC – Two-and-a-half million Club Penguin players embraced the spirit of the season and displayed their passion for helping others this holiday by participating in a unique online giving opportunity that let them donate virtual coins to support real world causes.

The second annual Coins for Change campaign, which ran from Dec. 12, 2008 through Dec. 22, 2008, encouraged the kids who play Club Penguin to donate the coins they earn playing games within the popular virtual world in support of causes dedicated to helping children.

At the end of the campaign, players had donated three billion virtual coins. The virtual donations served as votes which were tallied for New Horizon Foundation, an organization started by the founders of Club Penguin, to help it determine how to allocate $1 million amongst charities dedicated to helping children. New Horizon Foundation has selected the following charities to receive a portion of its donation:

Village Gamer would like to wish all of our readers a very happy and safe holiday season.

Thank you for sending us your news and for helping to make our first seven months online a success. We look forward to continuing our growth in 2009, along with all of the new and cool games, programmes and innovations developed by Canada’s very talented digital media industry.

Players of FIFA 09 on Xbox 360® and PLAYSTATION® 3 who upload their replay videos to EA Sports Football now have the chance to show their super-strikes to thousands via the site’s popular new Top 10 Goals feature.

Anyone with either console and an internet connection can upload their best goals at the push of a controller button. Visitors to the site can then log in to the site to see their videos again, as well as download them and share them with friends directly or via on-site links to social networking sites.

Vancouver – Webnames.ca Inc. is pleased to announce that it has acquired Montreal-based registrar Papa.ca.

Papa.ca was previously a wholly owned subsidiary of Linnk Technologies, a full service web development company. Papa.ca was a CIRA certified registrar only offering .CA domain names.

“We are very excited to be able to service this new customer base,” says Stephen Smith, President of Webnames.ca. “Not only will they have access to Webnames.ca’s unparalleled customer support, but a full-range of domain name extensions and web services that were not offered by their previous registrar.”

With the acquisition of Papa.ca and new services introduced in 2008, including the .ASIA TLD, Webnames Privacy and the upcoming .TEL launch, Webnames.ca is looking forward to expanding on its past successes and remains committed to be the leader in domain name registration and management across Canada and internationally.

Toronto – The public is being invited to play a real time giant video game using BlackBerry Pearl Flip smartphones from Rogers Wireless to communicate with the Outdoor Broadcast Network’s massive video board on the Toronto Eaton Centre Media Tower at Yonge?Dundas Square – the first interactive video game promotion of its kind Canada.

The Outdoor Broadcast Network (OBN) secured the exclusive rights (for Dundas Square) to software distributed by Montreal’s iGotcha Media and took the idea to Rogers Wireless through its agencies, MediaCom and Publicis. The “Dial to Play” software has been integrated into the operating system of the 40’ x 30’ video board on the Toronto Eaton Centre Media Tower that overlooks Dundas Square, enabling users of the new Rogers Wireless BlackBerry Pearl Flip smartphone to interact with the giant video board.Read the rest of this entry »